The Altar Steps eBook

“No, Mark Anthony,” the priest replied.
“I’ve done my work at St. Agnes’,
and you’ve done yours. Your business now
is to take advantage of what has happened and to get
back to your books, which whatever you may say have
been more and more neglected lately. You’ll
find it of enormous help to be a good theologian.
I have never ceased to regret my own shortcomings
in that respect. Besides, I think you ought to
spend a certain amount of time with Ogilvie before
you go to Glastonbury. There is quite a lot of
work to do if you look for it in a country parish
like—­what’s the name of the place?
Wych. Oh, yes, quite a lot of work. Don’t
bother your head about Anglican Orders and Roman Claims
and the Catholicity of the Church of England.
Your business is to save souls, your own included.
Go back and read and get to know the people in Ogilvie’s
parish. Anybody can tackle a district like St.
Agnes’; anybody that is who has the suitable
personality. How many people can tackle an English
country parish? I hardly know one. I should
like to have you with me. I’m fond of you,
and you’re useful; but at your age to travel
round from town to town listening to my begging would
be all wrong. I might even go to America.
I’ve had most cordial invitations from several
American bishops, and if I can’t raise the money
in England I shall have to go there. If God has
any more work for me to do I shall be offered a cure
some day somewhere. I want you to be one of my
assistant priests, and if you’re going to be
useful to me as an assistant priest, you really must
have some theology behind you. These bishops get
more and more difficult to deal with every year.
Now, it’s no good arguing. My mind’s
made up. I won’t take you with me.”

So Mark went back to Wych-on-the-Wold and brooded
upon the non-Catholic aspects of the Anglican Church.

CHAPTER XXI

POINTS OF VIEW

Mark did not find that his guardian was much disturbed
by his doubts of the validity of Anglican Orders nor
much alarmed by his suspicion that the Establishment
had no right to be considered a branch of the Holy
Catholic Church.

“The crucial point in the Roman position is
their doctrine of intention,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
“It always seems to me that this doctrine is
a particularly dangerous one for them to play with
and one that may recoil at any moment upon their own
heads. There has been a great deal of super-subtle
dividing of intentions into actual, virtual, habitual,
and interpretative; but if you are going to take your
stand on logic you must be ready to face a logical
conclusion. Let us agree for a moment that Barlow
and the other bishops who consecrated Matthew Parker
had no intention of consecrating him as a bishop for
the purpose of ordaining priests in the sense in which
Catholics understand the word priest. Do the
Romans expect us to believe that all their prelates
in the time of the Renaissance had a perfect intention